Menu

106: Twixt (3D)

Twixt is quite possibly the worst and most peculiar film I caught at this year’s CPH:PIX festival. Surprising really, considering that it is the demented brainchild of the man who brought us The Godfather: Part 2.

Opening with ominous road shots of somewhere suburbia, we are nestled in with the welcome presence of Tom Waits doing a classically cryptic narration prologue. Maybe it’s just his brilliantly eerie ways, but Twixt has a confident, borderline arrogant opening which quite lovingly takes us on a rickety B-movie ride. Five minutes in, Waits has disappeared, the gloriously cliche TV movie charm seems to fade and it’s clear that Twixt is going to be a somewhat torturous affair. In 3D.

Adorning a questionable ponytail and a familiarly square face, Val Kilmer stars as the ‘bargain basement’ Stephen King novelist Hall Baltimore. Touring up and down the country to promote his new, tweeny vampire thriller, he stumbles upon a real life murder mystery. After some intoxicated hallucinations with his literary hero Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin), Hall decides to stick around in the small town town and crack the case with the assistance of sheriff and aspiring fiction writer Bobby LaRange (Bruce Dern).

Not just complacently unoriginal, the story is limp and one-dimensional. Without any sunglass supercuts, Val Kilmer spends the duration of the film wandering around the ominous woodlands looking for the murderer at large. The nowhere-pacing gives it the tautly packaged stylistic and cerebral quality of an RPG video game, like 1999’s Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast, infamous for being the most boring game ever created. Twixt’s roaming premise soon becomes a car crash when the presentation of the story is so matter-of-factly portrayed and devoid of tension that we are unable to muster any enthusiasm for this needy, pathetic character. Again, just like Shenmue.

Even worse is that Coppola seems to be aware of the fact. Dragging his knuckles and the film along with a threadbare narrative, retro-fitted 3D technology is latched on to two of the scenes, purely for saleable gimmick’s sake. Even if the stereoscopy is fleeting, it cements the film as being nothing more than a lazy, zeitgeist spectacle of modern times.

In trying to appease the masses, Coppola fails to entertain anyone. Not complex or adult enough for older audiences, not emotively gripping or accessible enough for younger crowds, on all levels, Twixt is equally tedious for all walks of life.